Found this on fukung. Reposting here because I know it’ll cause another post frenzy!
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Well said son.
Word.
I feel good about this.
squee
Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did.
I get mad when I’m being forced to pay more for people to get health care when I’m already paying for their Medicare.
I recommend doing a bit of research about what Medicare actually does and doesn’t do, and what happens to people who have a chronic illness that requires constant medical attention but who can’t be on Medicare constantly.
Having medical attention available for everyone all the time will in the end put the money to much better use.
I’m on Medicare.
Simply because I had my feet blown off in Iraq.
I also collect my retirement from the US Army, as well as Social Security while going to College full time to get my life back on track.
I think you just may have earned it!
^^This.
Me Fail. Apparently I was up too late. Not Medicare, Welfare and support like that.
Welfare I will agree with you on that!
I know families who are born into Welfare, and never do anything to get out of it. Like it’s a source of pride or something.
I understand living in the ghetto’s is hard, living in huge metropolitan areas is difficult, but getting out and turning your life around isn’t impossible. I know plenty of folks who have done it, and live quite comfortably because of their hard work and honest pay.
Regardless, you’ve earned your those services.
fuckin Communists!
or something.
Yeah giving people more for free is always the answer. It seems everyone thinks that money just magically appears. That “In God we trust” actually means gods adding in money to the US government.
Best quote to describe this “for one to get without working, another must work without getting”
This forces people to pay for something they don’t want or cannot afford. My mom is a cancer survivor so when this thing hits and she HAS to get insurance, her bill is going to be outrageous.
The more people paying into a system, the more efficient it becomes. That’s how insurance works. What basically happened was that people turned down the chance for the whole nation to have Tricare insurance, which is some of the best insurance available, because Sara Palin said that Commie Obama was going to bury our Grandmothers.
It’s not about giving people free stuff. The insurance would be able to pay for itself in a few years time from tax revenue, and hospitals would be able to stop charging ridiculous rates to make up for all the people who can’t afford to pay their bills but still show up at the ER when their kid breaks their arm.
Hey guys! Something looks good in theory! That must mean it will work perfectly when applied!
Yea, sure. That concept works all the time.
Fantastic reason to not try to improve our situation.
Imagine if people could find a job that fulfills them, instead of taking a part time job at a deli just so their kid has insurance.
There’s the good in people there. You take that job for your kid. Others, however, sit at home, collect unemployment, because they dont want to work for 9 dollars an hour, because its “below them,” or not tutor kids in math for 11 an hour because “they can do better.” Just two examples off the top of my head. Most of these people dont really want to work, they want the easy way out. Giving them that isnt fixing anything, its contributing to the problem.
You are aware that one has to have had a job to collect unemployment and has paid into the unemployment fund via that said job?
“Something looks good in theory! That must mean it will work perfectly when applied!”
What, you mean like unregulated corporate greed? Yeah, look how well that’s worked out.
Either way, I’m still going to have money out of my check to pay for people who dont get medical insurance. Even if it pays for itself in a few years, think they’ll give me that portion of my paycheck back, or pay me retroactively for supporting people who dont have jobs? Granted, some of them may not be able to get a job. But there’s just as many that refuse to get a job, yet demand a right to health care.
Give and take. You should get what you give. If you’re not contributing to society, why should you be society give you anything?
Nonsense.
First of all, do you really think that you aren’t already paying for those people? Someone goes to the ER, skips on the bill, and the hospital makes up for it by charging more to insurers, who are guaranteed to pay. You help the insurers make this up by paying higher rates than most other free countries.
Second, there are plenty of people who contribute to society who have no medical coverage. No one in my home has insurance, and everyone works. It costs more for me to get insurance through the state for my kid for one month than it costs to have his strep throat paid for out of pocket.
Also, the attitude that something is coming out of your paycheck to benefit someone else is a bit short sighted. Lots of things come out of your paycheck or property taxes for the common good, like roads, police, fire, parks, etc. Why draw the line at keeping the populace healthy (and therefore productive and employable?)
I know I’m already paying for those people. I dont want to pay more for them.
As for your second point. My point was for those who ARE NOT contributing to society, the leeches of this country. There are tons of them around – hell, half of the country doesnt even pay taxes.
Roads are paid for by taxes. Why? Because I use the roads, they get paid by taxes. Police, fire, parks, all get used for the good of my community – I live in my community, they protect it, I pay for it in taxes. However, I am not the many people such as my aunt that do not work, yet still gets health care.
Before we try to give socialized health care, lets try fixing Medicare, or Medicaid, or even Social Security. All three are bankrupt. Show me that they can fix those programs, and maybe I’ll have a little faith that they can run something without fucking it up.
Half the country doesn’t pay taxes? Do you know why that is true? They don’t pay taxes because they don’t make enough to pay taxes. They get everything they put in back, except for the FICA, unemployment, etc…
Social Security would not be in this trouble if it wasn’t used as an un-repaid loan program for US wars since Korea.
So in the entirely-likely event that your mother has a recurrence of cancer, what’s she going to do without insurance?
Chemo and surgeries can cost a fortune… is she going to get without working?
Or are you expecting her just to lay down and die?
My mother did have cancer. She had two kids four years apart, me and my brother, without insurance. My parents were building their house in Alaska, while my dad was going to school in the winter. She had cervical cancer when she was pregnant with me. She risked her life for my life, against her doctors and my father’s wishes. She wound up having her cervix removed, yet on a checkup she had to have her uterus removed six months later.. Low income, building a house in Alaska with 2 kids and 2 surgeries, no health insurance. They did it. They flourished after all of it. Cry me a river.
So you’re saying that if she gets cancer again, she’s done enough already in life that it’s okay for her to die?
And now that you tell us she didn’t have insurance last time she had cancer, please also tell us who paid for her multiple surgeries and doctors visits.
Good for them for thriving, but she’d be dead already if someone didn’t pay the bill.
Man expensive emergency room visits or a charity organization. There are a lot of them for people w/ cancer.
err many*
I will say this:
The conditions at WRAMC (Walter Reed Army Medical Center) were NOT horrible.
I was there recovering from my injuries when that whole media shit storm hit the news.
Every major US City has rats, Washington, DC is no exception.
WRAMC is a very old facility with many buildings that have been closed for years now (mostly due to asbestos). Some of these buildings have broken windows, etc… but we weren’t living in them.
If you’ve ever been in the Military, you know there’s paper work for every damn thing imaginable. No different when you’re at WRAMC.
The staff are over worked and under appreciated. The influx of seriously injured men and woman compared to the professional medical staff on hand made it hard on everyone. Firing people won’t fix the problem, but HIRING MORE will.
Trash and bugs / pests found in Soldiers rooms? These Soldiers were the men and woman stationed at WRAMC, NOT the patients. They leave their room trashed so they won’t get a roommate, Privates do it all the time, and have been since I’ve been a Non-Commissioned Officer conducting room inspections.
Conclusion: Like myself, thousands of seriously injured servicemen and women have received top notch care from WRAMC, and we owe our lives (and our ability to function in a normal life) to them.
Also, the media sucks: don’t believe everything you watch on the news.
Noted.
Fair enough, although you still have to watch out sometimes with the VA.
www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/florida.va.facilities/index.html
Of course, it’s not like this kind of thing or worse doesn’t happen in private medical systems, too…
Yes, VA’s aren’t noted to be the very best there is to offer.
Luckily I get most of my prosthetic work down at the Jamaica Plain VA in Boston, MA. I have yet to have any sort of issue with them at all.
Unfortunately for the VA’s, it’s federally funded, but each VA in each state is ran differently. So depending on where you live, you could have a great VA, or a terrible one like the one in Florida apparently. =(
Yes, Florida. Home of the wrong-leg doctor.
books.google.com/books?id=kjgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=rolando+sanchez+amputated&source=bl&ots=AA4Gcryjza&sig=8qNczWB7EM4zN0N-6T8yCTD4_HY&hl=en&ei=lE1bTP71KYL58Aa-1umMAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCoQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=rolando%20sanchez%20amputated&f=false
Yeah, there are some huge discrepancies between various VA hospitals. The one in Brooklyn was…interesting.
So let me get this straight. You lost both your feet. You’re on Medicare. You’re on Social Security. You’re on retirement. You’re getting your college paid for. And you get top notch medical care.
Now tell me this. How do you feel about someone recieving money and medical care for not working, for not getting their feet blown off in the line of service? To me, thats wrong. You did an amazing service, paid a huge price for it, meanwhile they dont have to do anything. Therein lies my problem with this socialized health care. It will be abused.
Damn those cancer suffers, abusing the system! What fucking bastards!
Everyone in this country already has ‘free’ health care. A hospital can’t deny you treatment because you don’t have insurance. The only difference is that they foot the bill (which gets passed down to the insured, along with many fees and snatchies along the way).
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have everyone paying into a single pool, where the money could be used more efficiently to ensure that we all get affordable, quality care?
I have no problem with allowing people to pay more for better care. However, I feel that health care is a basic human right which should not be denied to anyone. It makes sense morally and economically. The cost for caring for the uninsured is still there, it’s just not front page news. Every time someone with no insurance has to be cared for, society pays for it.
Third party health insurance.
When my coworker and best friend got laid off, he took on Aflac, and their medical coverage is cheaper and better than the one he had working for Tyco. So good, when he got hired with Honeywell, he denied Honeywell’s health coverage just to stay with Aflac. He has a preexisting condition – a slipped disk from a car accident that incapacitates him without meds.
He had a preexisting condition, but Aflac said to keep his old BCBS insurance card, and the policy number would be the same, and everything was OK.
Insurance is there to be paid into until you need it, if ever. Start paying into it early, before conditions start, as in my coworker with having insurance before the car accident. Dont get in a car accident, slip a disk, then try to get insurance and complain when you can’t. Prepare for things that can happen, dont expect things to be wonderful and skate by and expect the same treatment as those that have been paying into it when something does happen.
I’ve never been to the hospital in my life. Yet for years and years I pay for medical coverage in case something happens. I pay for life insurance, so if I die, someone can see some money out of it. I’ve paid forth, so when I need it, I get it. Not so when SOMEONE ELSE needs it, THEY get it. Just like I pay for the roads because I use it, not because THEY use it. Road maintenence on the way to my property I pay, not people on the other road. Thats absurd, and the same applies here. Pay for your shit, dont make someone else pay for you.
You pay for many more roads than you use, friend.
If you pay school taxes, you pay for more children’s education than just your own (generally assuming you have any, since otherwise you’d only be paying for other people’s children).
An enormous amount of your federal tax money goes to paying for the military, but chances are good that those dollars are going to protect more than just your own home.
You pay DMV employees not to give driver’s licenses to any incompetent lunatic out there, but you’re paying for more people not to get killed in stupidity-related car crashes than just yourself.
You pay food inspectors to make sure that more than just your meat hasn’t been mixed with shit on its way out of the slaughterhouse.
The stupidity of the extreme bias in that picture and lies invalidate it and make it not even worth finishing.
How about “you didn’t get mad when I made that last stuff up so how about now? Now can I have some attention?”.
Of course universal healthcare would bankrupt America and you guys would either be taxed out of existence as a country or fold like the USSR. That’s just a fact.
Anyone who wants to argue otherwise at this point isn’t worth talking to.
Nice choice of picture though. The rest is just some little uneducated try hard rambling some crap off he heard from another loser.
Better to be abused by some people than to be abused by corporations/insurance companies. I’d rather allow some lazy SOBs get help (they may not have earned) than people who’ve paid in get refused. It’s a much lower rate of being screwed. It always amazes me that people are so terrified that someone, somewhere may get unearned, undeserved bennies that they’re willing to screw themselves out of those same bennies. The rich don’t give a fuck and honestly believe they deserve every and anything simply because they were born rich. Most of us aren’t rich, why give into them so much?
why work at all?
Those are some deeply fascinating links.
Gave me something new to think about.
tuna has a point – the game is ultimately zero sum… which means that money has to come from somewhere in order to be spent. the government cannot steal or earn other than through its citizens taxes. that said, i don’t think that’s the real issue: insurance in and of itself is a flawed piece of crap.
insurance is a perversion of a dutch construct built many years ago. modern insurance is a game of numbers and is so ridiculously hard to monitor and insure that it is paid out by that third party that it’s practically laughable. Sure, there are reforms, but insurance still means that people can continue to exploit others and also use others cash in highly risky bets called investments. IF people actually saw how their money was getting spent they’d be a lot more careful in monitoring its use to prevent against wastage but also they’d have to think about the time they might get sick… so selfishness in the moment would screw them over down the road. People who live near each other or are somewhat demographically similar can form huge groups and pool money on their own. This isn’t even worth finishing but anyone who says healthcare is a godsend is fucking wrong.
there is a problem with any plan and I get nervous when they say it is perfect because that means they’re either gonna fuck me in the ass or that they are hiding the flaws because they’re too eager to sell the thing to me. Hence, i’m leery, but i like the idea.c
There are a lot of pretty thoughtful posts on health care in here. Please let me humbly suggest a few ideas. I am rally sorry for the wall of text, I have never been a really concise writer.
Concerning Nationalized Health Care:
1. We are talking about scarce resources when we are talking about health care. Money comes from producers in society. Generally, producers are working adults. The three most vulnerable groups (generally speaking) in society are not producers. These are children, the elderly, and the disabled. The vast majority of government (State and Federal) resources for health care are for these groups. The producers are taxed to pay for the benefits given to the non-producers. In theory, this system works when you have a long term application, so yesterday’s producers get their due benefits when they are not producing anymore. This requires that the system is run well for a long period of time. Lets be honest, that is a poor bet if it is government run. Theory = Win, Practicality = fail.
2. Understand the health programs and what they currently do:
Social security is designed for people over 65, and it takes a very strict definition of “total disability” to get it before then. Such total disabilities include complete legal blindness, loss of two limbs, etc. When you turn 65, you can start getting checks that amount to about $6,000-$7,500/year (yes, that’s all), depending on how much you contributed when you were a producer. Have a nice retirement.
Medicare is basically health insurance for people over 65. Most private insurance companies terminate health coverage at age 65 because at that point people become eligible for Medicare benefits. It has premiums, different options depending on how much you want to pay, and resembles loosely private insurance in the way it is structured. The main thing that sets it apart is that it is always available at age 65 regardless of preexisting conditions and past medical history.
Medicade is a state and federally funded program that covers the medical expense of those unable to pay for needed medical services. Medicade is the main one people get pissy about (among other state welfare programs). The Federal Government contributes 56% of Medicade expenses, the rest is on the State. This is a “need based” system that you get all the horror stories from all the time. The teen mom with three kids and racks up bajillons of dollars of medical expenses, the lazy guy who sits at home watching cable all day getting a state check for his disability, etc.
3. Most of the government programs that are designed to help the public created since the New Deal have been based on an expanding population model. In an oversimplified explanation, you use the greater producer base of tomorrow to pay for the promises you make today. Interesting idea, but we have never really been able to make it work efficiently. This model is being abandoned by the European community given their population decline. For a population to remain stable, there must be a fertility rate of 2.11 (2.11 kids on average per woman in her fertile years). The US is currently stable at 2.10, but most European countries are around 1.6-1.8, with the lowest being a 0.69, which has everyone over there crapping bricks. That being said, without a fertility rate greater than 2.11, and preferably significantly greater, expanding population modeled programs are doomed to bankrupt the next generation. It could be argued, actually, that the reason for the lower fertility rates in Europe have to do with their social welfare programs taxing the producers so heavily, since the producers are also the portion of the population able to have children. They have no additional income to responsibly have children and pay for their needs, so they don’t have kids, resulting in lower fertility rates.
I have written WAY TOO MUCH now to attempt to elaborate my own views on this stuff more, but I just wanted to get some concepts out there to maybe help out the discussion.
Long time reader, first time poster. Good to finally contribute something. Have a great day everyone!
To anyone opposing – Don’t you find it embarrassing when countries like Australia have had public health and medicare since the 70’s? Bulk billing is awesome.
Also – we probably get taxed more than you, have a smaller population and also have the dole, which supports the unemployed. If you think you’re about to run out of money when you’re a supposed ‘super-power’ you’re being fed bullshit.